Software Requirements Essentials, 1st edition

Published by Addison-Wesley Professional (March 9, 2023) © 2023

  • Karl Wiegers
  • Candase Hokanson
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Details

  • A print edition

Title overview

Software Requirements Essentials presents 20 core practices for developing and managing requirements on any project. Leading requirements experts Karl Wiegers and Candase Hokanson focus on the practices most likely to deliver superior value for both traditional and agile projects, in any application domain. These core practices help developing software engineers understand business problems, engage the right participants, articulate better solutions, improve communication, implement the most valuable functionality in the right sequence, and adapt to change and growth. Concise and tightly focused, Software Requirements Essentials makes for an excellent supplement to the author's in a Software Engineering course.

Coverage on:

  • Clarify problems, define business objectives, and set solution boundaries
  • Identify stakeholders and decision makers
  • Explore user tasks, events, and responses
  • Assess data concepts and relationships
  • Elicit and evaluate quality attributes
  • Analyze requirements and requirement sets, create models and prototypes, and set priorities
  • Specify requirements in a consistent, structured, and well-documented fashion
  • Review, test, and manage change to requirements

Table of contents

Foreword xvii
Acknowledgments xix
About the Authors xxi

Chapter 1: Essentials of Software Requirements 1
Requirements Defined 2
Good Practices for Requirements Engineering 5
Who Does All This Stuff? 8
Some Recurrent Themes 9
The Life and Times of Requirements 11
Getting Started 11

Chapter 2: Laying the Foundation 13
Practice #1: Understand the problem before converging on a solution 14
Practice #2: Define business objectives 19
Practice #3: Define the solution's boundaries 26
Practice #4: Identify and characterize stakeholders 33
Practice #5: Identify empowered decision makers 39

Chapter 3: Requirements Elicitation 45
Practice #6: Understand what users need to do with the solution 47
Practice #7: Identify events and responses 53
Practice #8: Assess data concepts and relationships 59
Practice #9: Elicit and evaluate quality attributes 67

Chapter 4: Requirements Analysis 75
Practice #10: Analyze requirements and requirement sets 76
Practice #11: Create requirements models 84
Practice #12: Create and evaluate prototypes 91
Practice #13: Prioritize the requirements 97

Chapter 5: Requirements Specification 107
Practice #14: Write requirements in consistent ways 109
Practice #15: Organize requirements in a structured fashion 115
Practice #16: Identify and document business rules 121
Practice #17: Create a glossary 127

Chapter 6: Requirements Validation 131
Practice #18: Review and test the requirements 132

Chapter 7: Requirements Management 141
Practice #19: Establish and manage requirements baselines 142
Practice #20: Manage changes to requirements effectively 149

Appendix: Summary of Practices 157

References 159
Index 165

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